


thought you were the one (forever)

by Anserina



Category: Original Work
Genre: Deception, Guy Who Does Theater, M/M, Science Fiction Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 04:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20185942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anserina/pseuds/Anserina
Summary: Anselm d'Alincourt is a little bit of a ditz, and more than likely has an ulterior motive, but he saved Elliott's life, and Elliot has fallen much too far for him anyway.





	thought you were the one (forever)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [impilii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/impilii/gifts).

> Hi impilii, I loved your prompts and hope you like this! Title from [this song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJnRYBQukEw)

It always rains in Satellite.

The climate control on this part of Nostrum III had broken down some three months ago, and none of the maintenance guys the Federation had sent could figure out what was wrong, so people have gotten used to keeping their plants indoors and bringing raincoats and umbrellas wherever they go.

The evening Elliott arrived in Satellite, he witnessed an angel descend from heaven.

The vision of a man had opened the heavy double doors of the theater, walked out, and halted on the steps where Elliott was taking shelter from the rain. He had draped his coat over Elliott's shoulders and taken out his umbrella to walk Elliott out of the rain and the cold. Beneath the pitiful shelter of a nearby pavilion, the angel had asked if he had a place to stay, or plans for dinner, and Elliott had shaken his head no.

Elliott has heard that Satellite residents do not look kindly on the fighting, but he's tired, hungry, and far too weak to worry that this person might mean him harm, or to conceal the Gawinnan crest he wears under his cloak around his neck. He half-turns on reflex to hide the ruined half of his face from view. He had sustained an injury two weeks ago from a gatling laser. The day he left, he had made a messy holo-mask to conceal most of the damage from prying eyes, but the wound beneath is healing slowly. Not septic, and no longer raw thankfully, but he will always bear the scars.

"Can I buy you a meal?" the angel says, the downpour making the feathers of his wings droop, and Elliott nods.

Over a warm dinner at the ramen street stall down the road from the theater, the first good meal Elliott has had in days, he learns that the angel's name is Anselm (_Anselm d'Alincourt,_ he says with an accent Elliott is not entirely sure is fake), and he is only wearing this white toga and these fake wings because he is coming straight from a production of _Good Omens, _where he had played a general in the Army of Heaven_._

"Not even the lead part," Anselm says with an air of having been greatly wronged, as he pulls out his handheld and reluctantly switches out the holo-cosplay for more sensible clothes and shoes and his more usual face. "They don't know what they're missing."

"They certainly don't," Elliot says aloud, still memorizing every line of Anselm's face. Without the holo-cosplay his hair is brown, already growing damp from the rain and plastering to the side of his face. His eyes are narrow and gray in a thin, sharp face. Outside the table's wide black umbrella the rain keeps falling, damp and endless.

Between bites of warm soup and noodles, Elliott tells the story he supposes he owes his benefactor. After a disgraceful surrender by a traitorous excuse for a general on the frontlines of Cetus Gamma, his entire platoon had been unceremoniously turned loose on the galaxy with nothing but the clothes on their backs and an identity wristband containing their credentials and three hundred credits' back pay. Between hitching rides on cargo ships and the holding bays of transporter vessels, Elliott has been traveling for nearly a week in the general direction of Sol V and he has no idea where he even is right now. 

"You're at a table at a ramen store," Anselm replies, totally serious.

Elliott stares a moment, not quite believing his ears. Then he adds quite deliberately that he's sick, tired, filthy, and completely broke, and he doesn't think he has it in him to hitchhike another week home.

Anselm drinks it all in, attentive and wide-eyed. With the naive generosity native to those born into money, Anselm pays upfront for three nights' stay at the capsule motel down the street, and says he hopes Elliott can take some time to recover before continuing on for home.

At the motel entrance where they say goodbye, Anselm reaches up to push a lock of soaked hair out of Elliott's eyes. His fingers trail down the side of Elliott's face, passing through the messy holo Elliott had made himself to conceal some of the damage; stutter over the raised edges of the half-healed scar beneath, and smiles as he pulls away.

The next evening, he kisses Elliott.

The evening after that, he walks Elliott all the way back to his cabin at the capsule motel and gives him a night he won't forget.

The next morning, Elliott cleans up, asks for the last day's rent back and buys himself some better clothes with the credits, and gets a job with room and board at a brewery down the street called the Lexicon's Head.

* * *

Elliott stays on in Satellite for another two weeks.

It's not a permanent arrangement, he thinks; just a temporary means to save some money before he goes home, so he has something to show his parents and sister besides disgrace. First order of business is to get himself a new watch with an alarm function; he'd misplaced his own sometime during his first three day.

He doesn't see his benefactor again. He passes his evenings haunted by the memory of gray eyes and the phantom touch of fingers down the side of his face, so much gentler than the blaze of gatling lasers in the cold airless void between stars.

Two weekends later the theater puts on a modern imagining of _Yuri!!! On Ice_ and Elliott spends a day's pay on a front-row ticket. Anselm's eyes, scanning the audience, stop to rest on Elliott for a single moment before moving on, and suddenly the cost of the ticket was worth every cent.

Anselm meets Elliott round the back of the theater this time, pushes him against the rough brick wall and kisses him senseless, hands wandering over Elliott's waist and hips until they break for air. He pulls out his handheld and waves his skater's costume and long braids of blond hair into a set of street clothes and his more usual brown hair, now with silver highlights, under a hat.

"Surprised you noticed I was there," Elliott says breathlessly.

"I never forget a face." Anselm says it with a fully confident smile but Elliott supposes he is not that unrecognizable. The scar straight down his face, fully healed now but which will never fade, more than makes sure of that. 

"Also, one more thing. Your watch," Anselm says, holding it out. "It must've gotten mixed up with my things last time." It's definitely Elliott's: it has his initials and his date of enlistment stamped on the back. It's a military-issue atomic clock, nondescript but near-indestructible and keeps perfect time, and Elliott had hated to lose it.

Elliott invites Anselm back to his new place for a drink, and is terribly embarrassed that all he can offer is grocery store brand beer instead of the fine wines he's sure Anselm is more used to. Anselm comes from money and must have much more comfortable accommodations, much better company. He wouldn't need to spend his days in the company of a washed-up ex-soldier who's terrible to look at.

But Anselm isn't looking at the bad paintings on the wall, the mismatched furnishings, or the cheap neoplastic everything. He's looking at Elliott like he's the only thing in the world, all that stage presence and charisma focused down to a single point, and when he kisses Elliott again, Elliott thinks he might just drown.

That evening, while piling his clothes in the laundry hamper, Elliott can't find his pocket knife.

* * *

Vaughn, one of the waiters at the bar where Elliott works and younger than Elliott by two years, calls Elliott a fool. Anselm (_d'Alincourt_, Vaughn mocks; Elliott thinks that accent is nothing like the way Anselm says it) is a silly man, made soft by rich parents and the promise of a lifetime of luxury. He could be anywhere in the Federation but he's here in this backwater part of the planet just to live his dream of being a stage performer for a little while. He'd never make it even in vaudeville on Gemini XI or any of the true cultural metropolises of the galaxy. He has no idea what he's really doing, and after he's had his fun, he's not going to stay.

"None of the men like him do," Vaughn concludes, with more bitterness than absolutely necessary, and Elliott wonders if Vaughn has lived this story before, too.

"It is quite foolish, isn't it?" Elliott says wistfully. "To miss someone who doesn't remember you exist?"

"It is," Vaughn says, staring at Elliott with heartfelt pain. "It is."

The Lexicon's Head does not serve good food or beer by any measure, but it is conveniently located downtown where the foot traffic is high. Sometimes Anselm stops by the bar, with or without company, but he never seats himself in Elliott's area and Elliott is not sure Anselm even knows he's there.

Most of Anselm's friends are like Anselm himself: too much free time, long meaningless last names and rich parents who don't care. 

Elliott is just passing by, taking another tray of dirty dishes to the kitchen, when he catches a snatch of the conversation through the beaded curtain that sequesters the private room from outside.

"... that the guy you were telling us about, Anselm? Bad holo and the scar on his face?"

"It's not really like that," Anselm says. "We don't have to talk about it. Can we just forget it happened?"

"That really your taste, Alincourt? You couldn't pay me to sleep with him." one of the others says.

"It was a dare," Anselm says haughtily. "I never refuse. My pride is at stake. I got the second item, so pay up."

"Pocket knife? How's that proof?"

"Look on the handle," Anselm says. "That's the crest, right?"

The snick of the blade opening cuts through the air and another voice says, "That's for stabbing, not for daily use."

"I can't believe you got that off him. What did you have to do to get him to give you that?"

"It's a secret. Now pay up," Anselm says, one elegant finger to his lips as he holds out his other wrist-- the one with two decorative bracelets alongside the wristband -- expectantly.

Elliott, stricken, turns and leaves without a sound before Anselm can notice he's there.

* * *

In the end, Elliott can't stay away.

The next theater production he attends is the fourth in a series of screen adaptations of the _Deus Ex_ franchise. This is the episode where the protagonist is betrayed, he remembers from the holos he used to watch as a child, and feels a fierce sort of vindication when the lead Anselm is playing is left out in the rain.

After the curtain call Elliott slips backstage to the dressing-room where Anselm is returning his hairpieces to a box, and Anselm starts in on the lies again.

"You must have left this with me," he says, holding out the missing pocketknife as if he were just returning a lost item, not one he stole. He's a natural, Elliott thinks. He seems to even really believe it.

"What do you want this time, Anselm, as a trophy to show your friends? You can just ask for it instead of taking. I'll even give it to you."

Anselm, stricken, doesn't respond. Elliott catches his wrist - slender, two silver bracelets over the jut of bone - and presses his own wristband against Anselm's until he hears the beep of a completed transaction. "What I owe you. Seventy credits for two nights' room and board."

"I never asked you to pay me back," Anselm says.

"Then consider it payment for a fine two weeks' entertainment," Elliott says. "You saved my life when I needed it most, and I will always be grateful. You are a good man, Anselm, and a natural on the stage--" his voice wavers on the last word, and his lips quirk in cruel resignation-- "and I wish you well."

"No, wait, Elliott," Anselm says. "You know that's not what I meant at all. I like you. Really."

"All right, I believe you," Elliott says.

Anselm's face lights. "You do?"

_No, you idiot,_ Elliot thinks even as his heart breaks, and Anselm doesn't even seem to notice. "What do your friends want as proof this time?"

Anselm looks up at him, eyes alight. "Five hundred credits if I could get the crest from you."

The symbol of Gawinnan hangs around Elliott's neck still, a reminder of what was lost in the war. Elliott pulls the chain from around his neck and hands it over. "Then take it."

"Awesome, I'll be back to return it in a few," Anselm says.

"Take your time," Elliott says, not meaning it at all. 

The moment Anselm turns and leaves, Elliott checks the outbound transports: there's a cargo route with a stopover on Sol V that leaves in just two hours.

The transport idles in the holding bay. It feels good, Elliott thinks, to be in the passenger cabin for once: in the cargo bay there's no climate control, and he counts himself lucky if there's _both_ oxygen and a survivable temperature in the hold. The holo-cosmetic tickles the side of his face; it smoothens and blends the edges of the ragged scar, softening the visual impact, but anyone looking at him can tell he's been through something. He doesn't quite want to hide it any more. The war touches everyone, no matter how much they wish to deny it, and his very existence is proof of that.

Outside, a mechanical voice announces five minutes to liftoff.

Someone dashes into the waiting area, flushed and panting for breath. A familiar face. "Elliott?"

"Anselm? Why are you--"

"Vaughn told me where you were. He said you were leaving. You didn't say anything?"

"That boy," Elliott says, shaking his head. "I told him not to tell."

"He wasn't exactly forthcoming, but I'm very convincing, remember," Anselm says. "I said I'd come back and I don't break my promises. Here. This is yours." He drops the crest, chain and all, into Elliott's outstretched hand. The chain pools in Elliott's palm, and Elliott remembers that everything Anselm takes, he always returns in the end. (Except, it seems, for Elliott's heart.)

Anselm continues, "Where are you going?"

"Home," Elliott says. "About time I did anyway."

Anselm blinks. "I thought when you said at first that you were staying in Satellite, you meant for good. In any case, I don't suppose you'd consider staying another few days?"

"What for?"

Anselm blinks. "The pleasure of my company?" He continues, "Thanks to you, I'm five hundred credits richer and I don't know what to do with it. There's a nice coffee shop that just opened down the road from the theater and I'd love company."

Love, Elliott thinks, makes fools of even the wisest men, and this time he's not entirely sure if he means Anselm, or himself. "Sure," he says. He gets up and follows Anselm, through the rows of seats and out of the transport bay doors, sheltered by Anselm's umbrella from the eternal rain over Satellite. Behind him, his ticket back to Sol V lies abandoned on the seat.


End file.
